ELEVEN

Pal jabbed at a hamburger with her fork. It scooted across her plate, coming to a halt against a mound of rice. This time, Lola had flattened the burgers and fried them to a crisp, rendering their interiors a uniform gray, even though their exteriors posed a danger to Margaret’s young teeth.

“Guess you decided against chicken,” said Pal.

“At least the burgers are cooked through,” Lola retorted.

“Unlike the rice,” Pal pointed out.

The rice was a bit crunchy, Lola had to admit. Unlike the previous night, she’d started it in plenty of time, but hadn’t paid attention to the final direction to let it sit and steam after she turned off the heat.

“I’m sorry about the chicken,” she said. “I forgot about stopping by the store when I was in town.” She’d been so rattled by her encounters with Tommy McSpadden and Tyson Graff that she hadn’t given the groceries a second thought until she’d had to confront dinner again.

Pal tapped her knife experimentally against the burger’s crust, whacking it a little harder each time, waiting to see when it would break through. “Didn’t you go to town just to get groceries?” Tap, tap. “You were gone a long time. If you didn’t buy food, what’d you do instead?” Tap.

It was the first time Pal had shown the slightest bit of interest in her. Lola wished she hadn’t.

“We went to the library,” she said. Pal didn’t need to know it was the newspaper’s library, and that they’d actually gone the day before.

Margaret turned to her. “Mommy—” Lola had long given her to understand that lying ranked right up there with cursing and junk food.

Pal’s expression, usually so flat, came alive. Her blue eyes went to slits. Lola wondered if that’s what she’d looked like as a soldier, rifle raised to her shoulder, sighting her target. “Where are your books?”

“We’re not going to be in Wyoming long to make it worthwhile to get a library card and check out books. But it was nice there, in the air conditioning.” Thirty had to have a library. And every library she’d ever been in—with the exception of the one at Kabul’s university—was air-conditioned.

“Where’s your phone?”

“What?” Was Pal going to check out her story? Maybe call the library, see if an out-of-town white woman and her Indian child had been there that day? “Why do you want it?”

“You’ll see.” Pal held out her hand. Her new scars were healing. She saw Lola looking. “Your phone.”

Lola gave it over. “Don’t you have your own? What about a land line?”

Pal punched some numbers. “Who was I going to call in Afghanistan? As to the land line, I canceled that when I went overseas. Hey, Delbert.”

Lola heard Delbert’s voice, his confusion clear, on the other end. Pal cut him off.

“This is Lola’s phone. Listen, we’ve got ourselves a problem.” Lola braced herself. She couldn’t think of a single good explanation of why she’d been in town, not one that wouldn’t tip off Pal, anyway. Pal would probably ask them to leave. This time, they’d have to comply. Lola felt a tug of regret for the story she’d never be able to write. At least she hadn’t tried to sell it to anyone yet.

“Yeah, Delbert. I’m fine with ravioli, but we’ve got a couple of picky eaters up here with us. Lola was going to get some chicken in town today, but she forgot. She forgot a few other things, too. What things? Normal things. Bread, stuff like that. From the supermarket down in town, not the rez store.” She paused. Delbert’s voice remained unintelligible to Lola’s ears. Pal nodded. “Could you? That would be great. Maybe some ice cream for Margaret, too.” She ignored Lola’s vigorous head shake. “Be sure and keep the receipt so she can pay you back. Oh, and Delbert? If it were me, I’d tack on some kind of surcharge, for gas or delivery or whatever. Thanks.”

Lola forced her mouth closed. It was the longest speech she’d ever heard from Pal. The woman looked at Lola with something like triumph in her eyes. Lola nodded acknowledgment. Anything was better, she told herself, than that dead gaze. Besides, the exchange with Delbert had distracted Pal from any further quizzing on the reasons for Lola’s trip to town.

Lola had learned to listen for the rattle and wheeze of Delbert’s fossil of a car, which labored so slowly up the hill to Pal’s house that she had time to throw on a T-shirt and jeans and be in the kitchen with Margaret and Pal by the time he arrived for breakfast each morning. But on this day, she somehow slept through its arrival, padding barefoot and late into the kitchen, only to be greeted by a counter crowded with grocery sacks, along with three pairs of eyes suspiciously full of mischief as they regarded her from their places at the table. Even Bub seemed friskier than usual, dashing from Lola to Margaret and back again, tail a blur.

Lola avoided the groceries and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Delbert got eggs,” Pal offered.

Lola gulped coffee. Pal sounded less surly than usual. Whatever these three were up to, she wanted none of it.

“You could cook them,” Pal added.

As though you’d eat any, Lola thought.

“Eggs, Mommy. Eggs, eggs,” Margaret chanted.

“And bread, too,” Delbert chimed in. “For toast.”

Lola drained her coffee cup, silently apologized to her scalded throat, and poured another. They’d trapped her. She didn’t trust Pal to make breakfast—the woman would probably poison them—and of course Margaret was too little. As for Delbert, custom demanded both that she cook for an elder and serve him first.

“Fine,” she said. She tried to remember if she’d ever cooked an egg. When she’d lived alone, if she’d eaten breakfast at all, she’d simply poured herself a bowl of cereal, which she consumed standing at the kitchen counter. But Charlie cooked eggs all the time. She was pretty sure she’d watched him at least once or twice.

“Frying pan?” she said.

Pal pointed to a low cupboard. Lola retrieved a cast-iron pan, set it upon the stove, and twisted the knob until the gas caught. She went through the bags and found the eggs and the bread, along with a wealth of vegetables and condiments and even more soy milk for Margaret. She calculated—no use wasting more than a single egg on Pal, who probably wouldn’t eat it anyway—and broke a half-dozen eggs into the pan, recoiling as the white dripped from her fingers.

“Maybe you want a spatula,” Pal observed. “There’s one in the drawer.”

Maybe you want to come over here and cook these damn eggs yourself, Lola thought. She found the spatula and prodded the eggs. The yolks broke and immediately adhered to the bottom of the pan in an immovable mass.

“There’s butter in one of them bags,” Delbert offered, a little late. That would have kept the eggs from sticking, Lola realized. At least she could butter the toast. She found the bread and popped a couple of pieces in the toaster. By the time she turned back to the eggs, they’d begun to burn about the edges.

“Something stinks, Mommy.”

“I’m well aware of that.” Lola scraped the mess of eggs onto four plates, tiny amounts for Margaret and Pal, somewhat larger ones for Delbert and herself. A good portion of the eggs remained stuck to the bottom of the pan. The smell of burning bread warred with the eggs’ sulfurous reek. Lola whacked the toaster and two carbonized pieces of bread popped up. She ran a knife across the surface, scattering black crumbs into the sink. “I’ll take these pieces, if you don’t mind, Delbert,” she said. She strove to keep her voice even. She wanted to scream. She managed a tight smile. “Let’s see if I can do better with the next batch.”

“There’s some Tabasco and ketchup in those bags,” Delbert said. “Might help with the eggs.”

It did. By the time Lola was done doctoring her own eggs into edibility, they were more sauce than egg. She gnawed at her pieces of toast, which had lost all resemblance to bread, tasting instead like wooden shingles. Not that she’d ever tasted shingles. The room had gone ominously silent. Even Bub sat frozen in some sort of expectation. Lola tried to come up with an adequate apology, one that would mask her own resentment at being forced into a role for which she was so obviously unsuited. She raised her eyes and opened her mouth to begin.

No one was looking at her. Instead, Margaret, Delbert and Pal all exchanged glances, obviously in some sort of cahoots. Margaret and Delbert shook with silent laughter, and even Pal’s typically frosty mien had thawed a degree or two. Lola wondered what else they had planned.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” Lola said. “Whatever the hell you three are up to, out with it.” How much worse could this morning get?

“Quarter, Mommy,” Margaret said. “Two quarters.” She burst into giggles.

“Just for the record, I don’t think hell is a particularly bad word.”

“Three quarters now, Mommy.” Lola told herself that Margaret’s superior counting skills indicated her daughter was a math genius, and not just a mercenary little soul.

Pal put a single bite of eggs into her mouth and choked them down, making sure Delbert saw her. The minute he looked away, she put her plate on the floor. Bub heaved a martyred sigh and trudged to do his duty. “You might want to put the chicken away,” Pal said. “It could go bad fast in this heat.”

“Right.” Lola was grateful for any excuse to leave that dreadful table. She searched the bags on the counter. “I don’t see any chicken. Did I miss it?”

Margaret had the whooping belly laugh of an adult, so forceful she slid from her chair and rolled onto the floor.

“Delbert,” Pal said, raising her voice above Margaret’s laughter, “did you forget the chicken?”

“It’s not in them sacks?” All three of his teeth showed.

Lola went through the groceries again. “I don’t see it,” she said. Just as well, she thought. One less thing for her to ruin.

Delbert slapped his leg. “Must be in that bag out on the porch.” He left the room. Margaret climbed to her feet and jumped up and down. “He’s going to get the chicken, Mommy.”

Damn the whole lot of you, Lola thought. This time, she vowed, she’d go to her phone for recipes for chicken. She’d follow directions. She’d make an edible, nay, a delicious dinner, and shut them all the hell up. For just a moment, she thought of Charlie’s ultimatum, and of the fact that, if she didn’t accept his proposal, she’d be forced to learn to cook. A point in the “yes” column, for sure. The door opened and all thoughts of Charlie and his offer of marriage vanished.

Swinging upside-down from Delbert’s hand, its legs bound with twine and its baleful yellow eyes fixed firmly upon her, was a very large, very angry, and very live chicken.